The 2016 Super Bowl has kicked off! While the football won’t soar thru the air for a few more days, marketers are already vying for consumers’ dollars. The Super Bowl is the last source for mass media reach. Last year, 114.4 million people tuned into the game, and advertisers paid $4.5 million for :30 in front of this audience. Adweek recently reported that ad prices in 2016 were up about 11%, putting a $5 million price tag for a spot in next Sunday’s game.

Only a few brands can afford to spend at that level. However, there are other ways to tap into the Super Bowl audience without dropping $5 million in just thirty seconds.

Buy Local: buy spots in major markets on local CBS O&O stations. Asking price on a spot in top three markets is still high at an estimated $2 million. But other markets are asking less than $250k, which opens up the opportunity to run ads in the game at a much lesser cost.

Partner with a relevant sports site, blogger/commentator or sports radio station to create “brought to you” highlights to air during the game. These highlights should be shared on publisher and brand websites and social media during the game. This doesn’t have to just be greatest football plays but celebrity sightings, best fashion, crazy fan moments, etc. Depending on size, a sponsorship of a national website would cost between $50,000 and $200,000.

The game might be on the biggest screen in the room, but don’t forget the smaller screens. Social media and messenger apps see a higher volume of traffic during the game, most of which occurs on mobile. Build a campaign around key hashtags that correlate with both your brand and the game. Plan content, promotion, or other offerings to encourage consumer engagement.

Salesforce estimates $5 million on Facebook can buy 250 million video views. A view is only three seconds, but this approach offers high level of frequency. If the spot is entertaining and short, chances are high that over 71 million people will watch at least 75% of the spot. And social media engagement is high during live sports.

Instagram Marquees are estimated at $500,000 per day. This approach provides high share of voice and requires multiple creative executions, but also offers a way for a brand to tell a story.

Many networks offer counter programming alternatives that draw considerable fan bases. Consider Animal Planet; their Puppy Bowl audience in 2015 averaged 3.3 million viewers with a :30 running around $100,000. Hallmark Channel got in the game by launching Kitten Bowl. In addition to a spot in the cuteness, HC also organized watch parties in 20 cities in 2015.

Go long: drink a beer, enjoy the game, and catch the audience in post-game coverage. This game generates a lot of content in addition to sports. Plan takeover units, or high SOV placements, in sports, news, entertainment, pop culture outlets for the Monday following the game. Opportunities exist in TV, print, online so use multiple platforms to achieve scale, just be sure to allocate budget to match target audience usage habits.

We can’t all be 5′ 10″ strikingly beautiful, blond pop singers, but we can all succeed like one. Taylor Swift, one of the biggest names in the world, is not only gorgeous, talented, and charming, she is a PR genius. Listen up Brands.

Here are 5 Critical Brand Lessons from Taylor Swift:

1. Make Your Customers Feel Special

Taylor hosted what she calls “Secret Sessions” in her various homes across America. A secret session consists of a small number of lucky fans invited (by Taylor’s people) to a surprise at a mystery location. Once they arrive, the curious fans are seated in a living room. After a little anticipation and excitement, Taylor appears and plays them her new album, 1989. This was before it was released. She engages with each fan at the secret session, and most called this “the best day of their lives.”

Brand Lesson: bringing your fans along as insiders and part of the experience creates a deep loyalty and they want to share it with their friends. They become instant influencers. With Taylor, this went viral very quickly and it became an aspirational event for thousands of her fans. Give your fans an inside look at your company.

2. Engage Your Customers In a Personalized Way

Taylor has thousands of excited fans file into packed stadiums every night she’s on tour. It seems like it would be impossible for Taylor to connect with such big arenas. Taylor works magically to make you feel like you’re the VIP of the show, and the night will be the best of your life. In the 1989 World Tour, every audience member received a bracelet that interactively lit up different colors and patterns to each song she played that night. Therefore, the crowd became a part of the show. The brand is further amplified by the engaging theatrical performance filled with glittery costumes, talented dancers, phenomenal props, and sometimes guest stars like Nick Jonas, the USA Woman’s Soccer Team, or Lorde. As just a very tiny portion of the crowd, you still feel big and important. Taylor makes everyone feel special.

Brand Lesson: Any brand, no matter how big or small, should personalize experiences. Coke has done this well with their fun name cans.

3. Set your Brand Values and Stay True to Them

Taylor stands up for what she believes. She has real integrity.

In recent news, this pop star changed the music industry, or rather stopped the change in the music industry, by standing up for herself and other artists. She pulled her music off Spotify entirely and then threatened Apple Music immediately after its launch, which caused an uproar, Apple changed the rules for Swift. Taylor is just one girl, but she forced one of the biggest companies in the world to adjust to her liking. After this, Taylor was all over the news; people were wowed and praised her for standing up. In the end she got what she wanted and a whole new addition for her fan base.

Brand Lesson: Stay true to your values. People value brands that have integrity.

4.Collaborate to Amplify Your Brand

Taylor has always been known to shock her fans during concerts with surprise guests, whom she often sings duets. Outside of her concerts, Taylor chooses wisely on who she collaborates with. For instance, she sang a hit single with then up and coming heart break Ed Sheeran, she had fun doing a mock mix with T-Pain in one of her first albums, and even landed a track with John Mayer. Taylor is exciting in the eyes of her fans, and trust me, they love her on her own, but they’re always pleasantly surprised and excited when someone else comes into the mix. And Taylor always makes sure whoever she’s incorporating into her career is hot on the market, and a good person. She has her fans finding themselves getting two for the price of one in multiple situations, and it’s definitely a crowd pleaser.

Brand Lesson: yes, you’re awesome, but you can be even better when you work together. Make alliances and work together to create a power team that everyone’s watching. If you have Taylor Swift fans, and you have T-Pain fans, and the two make a song together, you might create some overlap. The same goes for brands.

5. Be Authentic

Being a celebrity, especially a young pop star, is a tough course to navigate. But Taylor has never apologized for being herself, for being genuine, and people respond to that. Even tougher is staying out of the media for mistakes you’ve made. Taylor, on the other hand, has a clean reputation. This is not because her PR people are really good, although I’m sure they are, but because there is no act behind the kindness. She’s just a nice person. She’s constantly takes time out of her busy day to reach out to fans, donate to people in need, or make her followers laugh. Taylor comes off as relatable to her fans with funny posts on Instagram and messages she sends through email blasts. Because of this reliability and caring personality, fans feel like they’re friends with Taylor, and they could be besties instantly if they met her. With her fans as her friends, she’s got a huge army that will stand by her through her career.

Brand lesson: be nice and provide outstanding customer service. Give back. Help your communities. These are all likeable and genuine values.

So yes, Taylor’s a great singer who writes catchy choruses and wears pretty sparkly clothes. But she’s also a leader among Millennials and GenZ. I’m seeing “Sparks Fly” from Swift’s superstar career.

I would wager most media buyers and sellers would agree that the ad buying process has become more diffucult in the past five years with the proliferation of media choices, the increase in ad technology, the decrease in media buyer training programs, the integration of social and mobile media buying, and the simple lack of time needed to get all the necessary work done in a single day.

Here are five tips for media sellers:

1.Do Your Homework Before Calling on a Media Buyer: As a buyer, we work closely with our brand clients to understand their business goals, their objectives in executing an ad campaign, their customer insights, and the competitive playing field. If a media sales professional hasn’t done any homework on the client, the competitive landscape or the challenges we face, then how can they possible help “solve the problem”?

2. Spend as much time listening as you do selling. Even if you’ve done your homework, it’s likely you will learn something valuable at a meeting with the buyer or even on a phone call. If you spend the entire time explaining your technology or media, you’ve missed the opportunity to understand how to offer up the solution. Solve, don’t just sell.

3. Try to determine who the decision makers are on a media buy: on the client side, the agency side, etc. I realize this can sometimes be difficult and with limited sales force, there is an instinct to go to just one person who is “making the buy”. In reality, media plans go up the chain in an agency and then up the chain at a client and many people weigh in on its merits, its efficiencies, its content, its value. If you are only calling on a media buyer, you may or may not be at risk up the chain. If you have not worked hard to understand the relationship dynamics throughout an organization, you will be at risk of losing a buy. This is especially true for large budget scenarios. On the other hand, if you are only calling on the CMO and not the media buyer, you will almost certainly risk inclusion in the plan. This is not a power struggle but a realization that the client has hired the media team to do the analysis and crafting of the plan.

4. Ask questions of the RFP and try to understand the top selection criteria for the media buy. We are always pushing our clients and our buyers to clearly state the selection criteria so everyone understands how the media proposals will be evaluated. With so many factors determining a “good” RFP, it’s critical to determine what variables are weighted the highest. CPMs and efficiencies are always a critical factor but as noise increases with media and engagement becomes more valuable, efficiencies alone are not the single highest value. Push the media planner/buyer to help you understand how your RFP will be evaluated.

5. Make it easy for mediaplanners/buyers to find you and your sales team. I cannot tell you how many times the past 5 years we tried to find a key sales rep at a digital company with extreme frustration. Find a way to make it easier to get your phone number and contact information.

The marketplace demands are more robust than ever, for both media buyers and sellers. The pure number of available media impressions for purchase has increased at an alarming rate. The good news is that brands are still spending record amounts of money on paid media. The bad news is that every digital company now has paid advertising as its cornerstone for revenue and that means more sales reps in the marketplace.

At the end of the day, most media buyers are looking for solutions to help solve a client’s marketing problem. The media sales professional who can offer that up in a compelling and clear way and understand what the issues are will be successful. It’s not just selling it’s solving.

We are honored to be named Media Agency for brands Nature’s Own, Wonder Bread, and Cobblestone Bread Co. BrandCottage will oversee integrated media planning and buying across all platforms, including traditional media, digital media, mobile media and social media. It’s a huge honor for us to be trusted with such iconic brands, Nature’s Own and Wonder Bread, and to be part of innovative marketing around Cobblestone Bread Co.

BrandCottage is excited to announce the addition of Ushma Patel to our team of media experts. Ushma has over 10 years of media planning/buying experience and spent much of that time in the digital arena. Ushma was most recently digital marketing manager at Carter’s Inc. Previously she held digital media planning roles at agencies including Nurun, Breathe, OMD, and JWT.

As we continue to grow, our clients demand more digital expertise. BrandCottage is fortunate to have someone of Ushma’s experience and skill set to help elevate all of our clients’ media plans to deliver audiences cross-platform. In addition, Ushma will further advance our media analytics offerings to the brands we serve.

Despite conflicting opinions and research, millennials continue to watch a lot of Television. Yes, TV viewership among young adults has lessened over time…but the decrease isn’t significant enough to warrant widespread panic. There’s also no need to compete for advertising dollars, thanks to a new technology that syncs the two screen consumer experience.

But first things first.

According to Deloitte, in March, 2013, 54 percent of leading millennials watched TV on any device.

During the last quarter of 2013, Nielsen reports that TV viewership among young adults isn’t fluctuating as much as people think. (Source: MarketingCharts)

“Nielsen’s most recent study indicates that Americans aged 18-24 watched a weekly average of about 22.5 hours during Q4 2013. That was a 47-minute drop-off from Q4 2012, which in turn had been down more than 2 hours from the year before.”

Other highlights from MarketingCharts reveal:

In the space of two years, Q4 TV viewing by 18-24-year-olds dropped by three hours per week

Most of that decline came between 2011 and 2012

The decline in viewing between Q4 2012 and Q4 2013 amounted to less than 7 minutes per day

Clearly, Nielsen has a vested interest in TV viewership numbers, so we must seek balanced and fair research from numerous and non-biased sources.

Stop Fighting for Ad Dollars

How can the chase for billions of TV advertising dollars come to an end?

Andy Nobbs is CMO at Civolution, a technology provider that manages and monetizes media content. He writes on TheGuardian.com that syncing the consumer experience with automatic content response technology can benefit both TV and digital.

“ACR technology and content triggering allow applications running on second screen devices to automatically recognize the content being played on the television screen and synchronize the displaying of a digital ad unit in real time. So the man in the city who wants to drive the exotic car can locate the nearest dealer and even schedule a test drive right at the moment of piqued interest – just as the TV ad has been viewed. The marketer doesn’t have to go through the costly process of re-locating this potential buyer on the internet—and the potential buyer doesn’t have to “remember” that empowering feeling of theoretically rocketing the sports car through the doldrums of the daily commute. What applies to the sports car can also apply to everyday consumables as well – anything from a pizza meal to video-on-demand.”

Nobbs goes on to explain that everyone can win because advertisers and brands ensure their content is seen rather than skipped, content providers can sell ads more effectively and appropriately, and viewers can move that much more quickly to act on that stirring instilled emotion: aspiration.

I have to agree with Nobbs when he says Television can make people take action unlike any other medium.

The anticipated result: Google corners the market on big brand advertising by providing instant tracking of online campaigns and consumer behavior. If a marketing initiative isn’t performing as companies had anticipated, quick changes can be made to improve results. Industry execs won’t be waiting 24 hours to receive analytics; the data can be available within minutes or hours.

The integration of vCE will allow Google to drill deep into the segmentation of digital consumers’ habits, preferences, and behaviors. vCE promises agility to brands watching from the sidelines.

In theory, Google hopes to woo advertisers who spend billions of dollars a year on TV out of traditional media and onto the Internet.

Isn’t the web the place where instant gratification is magnified in real time?

But as brands, advertisers, media companies, and tech firms continuously create this trajectory of opportunity that brings immense power, I have to wonder:

How are consumers reacting to this news? (Let’s not forget consumers can make or break a brand)

In the wake of security breaches and hacking, will a stepped-up level of online monitoring leave a bad taste in the mouths of online shoppers?

Are powerhouse companies like Google considered too ‘sneaky’ for their own good?

Executives from both Google and comScore say that for now, the multiyear agreement covers display ads and advertising on video and mobile devices. It will likely also extend to future ad products, technology and platforms that Google may develop.

Have you ever seen a TV ad just one too many times and become totally annoyed? How about that “stalker” banner ad (behavioral targeting is the official term) that will not leave you alone?

In media planning for brands, it’s common to set frequency goals for various media. In digital advertising this is known as “frequency caps”. The idea is to cap the number of times a consumer might be exposed to a message to prevent them from being completely annoyed. It also enables ads to be served to a broader group to increase reach and manage frequency. Too much exposure to an ad often results in a tuning out of the message, having the opposite desired response. At some point for all ad campaigns, the brand reaches a point of diminished returns. This is usually when a fresh ad is integrated into the mix. I mean how many times can we see the truck pull the space shuttle? There are volumes of statistical research that supports effective frequency theories, over decades of tracking ad campaigns. But what about frequency in social media?

I began thinking about this the other day when I realized I was getting social media fatique from some of the over-posters on facebook. Because social media learning is so new, it has not yet adopted some of the best practices from other media: like frequency caps. The default theory seems to be: post often. But a deeper look into what early “experts” say shows that posting on facebook 1x per day seems to be the prevailing wisdom at the moment:

1. Socialbakers proprietary tracking shows that Brands post on average 1x per day and media companies (news sources ) post an average 7x per day. In fact posting more did not increase engagement and likes and actually decreased engagement. Posting 1-4x per week received 71% higher engagement than 5+ times per week.

2. At the AllFaceBook Marketing Conference in December, Facebook asked a roundtable of experts and the belief then was Brands should post no more than 1x per day. Salesforce.com’s Customers for Life VP Michael Jaindl suggested that most professional users should only post one or two times a day. “The interaction rates are 19 percent higher,” he explained. Glyder director of social media Blake Jamieson agreed, saying he only posted one or two times a day.

3. Jeff Bullas wrote a great post that showed quality of content matters more than quantity of posts. In fact, more frequent posting of 3+ times per day shows less engagement than posting 1x per day.

4. In a recent Mashable article on top social media mistakes, Facebook suggests that brands start out with one or two posts a week to feel out the platform and see what works. Many brands post once per day, and many find that posting more than once per day can actually have an adverse effect on engagement. Facebook indicates that the average user “likes” four to six new Pages each month, so your content is constantly fighting for more attention from its fans. It’s better to post one excellent item per day instead of two decent ones. Bottom line: don’t overpost.

In media planning, there is a wealth of research over decades of ad testing, that supports effective frequency levels for maximum response and maximum brand awareness. Much of the recommendations vary depending on brand category, the competition, the consumer profile, the message. In social, it will take much more time to build an arsenal of reliable research on social media to know with certainty what frequency is most effective.

The best direction is to create compelling content, understand what your audience wants to hear, and don’t overdo the posting frequency…as it will likely wear down the audience and create an annoyance reaction.

How often do you post and how to you feel about people or brands who post too often?

We are excited to welcome Elaine Cheedle to the BrandCottage team as Group Media Director. Elaine brings extraordinary experience to our team with both client-side and agency-side Media Director posts.

Elaine Cheedle has over 20 years of experience in media and integrated marketing. She has worked client-side as Media Director at Cadbury Schweppes on brands like Snapple, Mott’s, Trident, and Sour Patch Kids, and agency-side at ZenithOptimedia, leading the Nestlé Beverages, Nestlé Nutrition, and Purina accounts. Her category experience is diverse, ranging from Consumer Packaged Goods, Banking, and Home Building Products, to Travel & Tourism, Airlines, and Retail.

Elaine will lead the BrandCottage consumer packaged goods practice area.